


Do Murderers Dream of Love

by kittensalad



Category: Dorohedoro
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Graphic Description, Holding Hands, Idiots in Love, Non-Sexual Intimacy, They're stupid okay, also shin just needs a hug, fluff but you're both disgusting murderers, give your local frankenstein hammer man a hug, they're trying to be cute when everything is literally horrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23038321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittensalad/pseuds/kittensalad
Summary: Shin is a murderer. That should make him incapable of love. It doesn't.Or, Shin, Noi, and the many little things that say 'I love you' when you're bleeding, covered in gore, and with your hand wrist-deep inside a dying man's cranium.[DISCONTINUED until further notice]
Relationships: Noi/Shin (Dorohedoro)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 123





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Kdkdkkf there's like 9 shin/noi fics on ALL of ao3 so I thought I'd uh  
> Try and fix that because they're the one of the Only Het Couples I Respect™
> 
> [cw for um... inherently homoerotic irreversible brain damage scene it got away from me]

Shin's heart was not something made to feel love. It was a violent thing, rampant and erratic, pumping away at an unsteady rhythm inside his chest cavity. And a chest cavity it was, torn open, ribs shattered and bent at sharp, inorganic angles, bright red blood spitting from the fleshy mass that heaved underneath exposed sinews and muscles where his skin had been flayed away. It looked serious. He might even die.

The blood spat faster at that thought. 

It was one hell of a gaping wound, and it hurt. That wasn't going to stop him. The scrawny little sorcerer he held by the throat's face was slowly turning to mushy red pulp. Shin felt his remaining eyeball pop underneath his knuckles like an individual fish roe, and it squirted a stream of ugly yellow-white slime at him. Shin felt the cornea fold and eventually snap. He pushed his fingers through the man's skull, through the strong but thin layers of muscle between his empty eye socket and his brain. More fluid leaked from the hole, this time watery and opaque. The sorcerer would've screamed, had the remains of his mouth allowed him the mercy. Instead his elongated tongue just flopped down and dribbled down his chest. 

One last push. Shin felt it. The man's brain, lukewarm against his fingers, completely still as the man shook and convulsed and gurgled against him. He grabbed it, curled his fingers around the warm weight of it, and gave a slow squeeze. The man's seizure came faster, as though Shin's hand were an electric current coursing through him. He foamed at the broken jaws, bubbles of thick white saliva pouring from those far dislodged lips. 

Shin gripped it harder, digging his blunt, gnawed fingernails into the gelatinous flesh, desperate to dislodge something, anything. Take a chunk of that pink meat and pulverize it, smash it into oblivion, until there was nothing left but an odd colored stain and a strange stickiness in his palm. 

The sorcerer gave out a sound like a dying cat, high and painful, almost needy, a disabled cry, and then he went limp. Limp as a ragdoll. As a carcass. Nothing but dead meat that Shin was now wrist-deep inside of. He whipped his hand out, indelicate as bone fractured to accommodate the exit, the empty loss of something. Of life. Of quite a bit of brain matter, actually. 

Shin was disappointed.

He looked down at the mess he'd made. Saliva. Blood. Brain fluid. Guts. Blood. More blood. He kicked something that looked rather like a liver across the psychedelic-carpeted bedroom and it made a wet splatting sound as it hit the wall. Perhaps he'd gotten a little carried away. 

For a second there he'd almost forgotten that he was dying. 

"Shit," he said, the words a little more breathy and slurred than he'd intended. He poked at the wound and his prying finger was met with an appropriate gushing torrent of blood. Every poke felt like its own personal gunshot directly into his heart. "...shit," he said again.

Shin reached down, sifting through the sodden carpet of entrails and picked up his hammer. It was broken, snapped clean in half, only held together by a single strip of duct tape. He'd have to patch it up again.

Again. The words echoed in his mind. Would there be an 'again'? Maybe he would die here, right now, heart near exposed for all the world to see, buried underneath the shifting, bloody sea of other people's guts. He doubted anyone would find him. As he thought, as his mind raced through possibilities and impossibilities, the stream of blood from his chest began to gradually lessen, slow. The pain crept in uninvited. 

Would anyone even notice? He had no family in this world or the next, all dead, long buried. He considered En for a moment, before deciding that new cleaners weren't hard to come by, especially not when you're... well, En. Lackeys formed lines into his office just to bring breakfast. He thought of Fujita, Ebisu, Doctor Kasukabe... all people he was barely acquainted with. Perhaps he would just keel over and mummify here, in this blood, dust and miscellaneous carpet bit swamp. 

The pain was bad now, not a throbbing or an ache, just a pain. His heart barely ticked away inside, singular droplets leaking from the severed arteries slowly like faucets that just weren't tight enough. Shin slipped his mask over his face and used it to wipe at the sweat gathering on his forehead and cheeks. His eyes were heavy. His limbs were heavy. The air itself felt heavy. He could feel the entire earth tilt on its axis, and his vision grew dark. 

He hit the sopping ground with the same sound the liver had made against the wall.

><

Shin was alive. Cool air pooled in his nose and lungs and his heart beat as unsteadily as it always had, safely tucked inside his now closed up ribcage. He could feel a faint but clearly artificially cold breeze against his skin and recognized it as the air-con in the En Family's sedan. There were no streetlights, and no moon to speak of, so the only light that shined inside that matte black bucket of bolts was the dull green glow of the radio's display. Apparently it was 3:53 a.m. 

Shin couldn't feel the coarseness of the old polyester seats underneath his cheek. With the amount he'd ended up sleeping in this car, he'd come to recognize the feeling, like few-day-old stubble, or very fine sandpaper tearing the skin from the soft parts of his face. No, he was lying on something soft, and slightly lumpy, but a world better than having rusted springs digging into you.

He moved his eyes upwards and saw Noi, eyes gently closed and eyelids flittering as though she dreamed. She dribbled slightly, from the corner of her lips. Shin lay on her lap, head cradled between two heavily gloved hands and supported by two leather-clad thighs. Her hair was falling in messy, unkempt strands across her face, swaying with the slow rise and fall of her breath. He reached up to tuck it behind her ears, but stopped himself with his hand suspended in the cool night air between them. 

He lay it back down on his once-again whole chest, heavy against the emptiness he could still feel there, the hole that no longer existed inside him. Shin closed his eyes, wished for sleep or unconsciousness to claim him. It didn't really matter which one.

 _Ah,_ he thought. _Ah._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What if they.... What if they h h... Hel....hedl hamnds......

Rain beat down on the tattered wreckage of Hole, and magic smoke gathered and crept low along the ground like fog. Shin didn't hate the rain, being half-human as he was. Sure, it made his heart hurt like strange acid reflux and made the scars on his arms ache to all hell but it wasn't unbearable. A masochistic part of himself almost liked it. It was the closest thing Shin had to feeling 'home'.

Well.

Maybe that wasn't entirely true.

He pushed that thought aside with a dripping hand and reached down to heave up the garbage bag at his feet. It gave a small groan of protest, as much as the body inside could manage with half a throat, but soon hung noiseless over his shoulder with only the sound of shifting organic goop. 

Noi strode beside him, as straight-backed and looming as usual. She cradled three identical black plastic bags in her arms effortlessly. The tinted lenses of her mask had begun to haze over, and Shin wondered for a moment how she could possibly see.

She was speaking, something about food, but honestly Shin wasn't listening. He was too caught up in the residual adrenaline of having just murdered three people to make out more than a few words at a time. It pumped inside his ears, in time with the rain, and turned everything else to white noise.

It corrupted his mind. Everything he saw scattered across the road, homeless people camping in alleys, trash piles looked like corpses. Every sound, every drop of that heavy rain against his skin sounded like a chant, an urge, saying 'go on', 'let loose', 'stop caring'. Every puddle and damp surface seemed stained with faint, bloody red.

It took him almost slipping on the moldy, slime-covered concrete of Hole's floor to realize that it was quiet. Not a peaceful quiet, either. The kind of quiet that creeps into your bones, an unnerving quiet. Noi had stopped talking. 

Shin lay the bag at his feet with a squelch and turned, expecting to see her mindlessly distracted by something, a stray cat or pile of interesting detritus, as she often was. No, the street was empty. Just garbage and overhead wires and dislodged signage. Shin was alone, with only the company of his thoughts, a half-dead body, and the storm.

How long had he been walking by himself? There was no sun to tell by, and he had no watch. Long enough, he mused. His undershirt and socks had been completely soaked through.

Noi?" he called, but his voice was dampened into nothing by the falling sheets of rain.

To his surprise, Shin actually felt panic rise in his throat like bile. Why? Noi was no child, despite how she acted at times, and would never let a common street thug get the better of her. She was invincible, she'd say. She could make her own door and find her own way back to En's mansion. It's not like she hadn't done it before.

Shin started to run back the way he came. He convinced himself the fear churning up his guts was just a fear of En chiding him for losing his precious cousin. Being turned into mushrooms was actually quite painful. He didn't let himself dwell on any other reason.

He found her, thankfully, slouched in an alley a few blocks away. She looked like a ghost, her skin pale as her hair and wraithlike, her mask thrown aside and dripping with what Shin discerned as vomit. The concrete was covered in it, pink mess and bloody red, and she was coughing with a near-raw throat.

 _The rain makes us sick,_ Shin's brain supplied.

He'd forgotten, unaffected as he was. Normally, with her healing magic, Noi was fine, but they didn't often spend as much time exposed to Hole's deluge as they had today. She was soaked through and chilled to the bone, shivers racking her body gently.

"Senpai..." she croaked, trying to make an effort to stand. The motion made her nauseous and resulted in nothing but another grazed knee that refused to heal instantly and the coughing up of another mouthful of something chunky and flesh-colored.

Shin kneeled down and pushed the hair from her face as she wretched. It was already sodden and matted with the second coming of her breakfast but he did it anyway, even if only for the thought. "C'mon. Staying here will only make it worse," he said, trying to keep his voice level as he hauled her upwards, supporting the entire weight of her on his shoulders. She was heavy, what with her layers upon layers of waterlogged clothing. 

"I can walk, senpai..." Noi mumbled into his shoulder, sounding breathy, as though every word was a struggle. 

"Oh? Really?" Shin replied, receiving a sharp jab in the ribs and a few whispered expletives in response. He dragged her along, his body a makeshift crutch as she limped forwards, and they were silent. Noi could barely muster the energy to wipe the droplets of rainwater from her eyes, and it felt very, very odd. Seeing her so weak. Bested by something as petty as the weather. 

"Senpai... I'm sorry..." There was the faintest hint of a choke in Noi's voice as it fought around the lumps of sick residue in her throat. "For being weak..."

 _You're not weak,_ he wanted to say. _You never have been.You're_ _stronger than me. Stronger than everyone._

"Shut up, Noi," he says instead. And he knows. He fucking _knows._

The door leading back from Hole was still hanging open when they reached it, a stark black thing, magically dry, untouched by the rain. Late evening sunlight shines through it, painting dappled orange shadows on the wet and charcoal grey concrete. It opened into the ruins of a white-brick house, grass creeping across what remained of the timber flooring, weeds worming through the gaps in the walls. 

Shin pushed Noi through it, stepped in himself, and watched as the door crumbled away like biscuit crumbs of black smoke. They both collapsed onto the ground, foliage cushioning Noi, Shin landing hard on his back on a splintered board. He groaned and rolled onto his side, feeling a bruise form along his spine.

"Senpai." Noi was looking at him, color slowly returning to her cheeks, but dark circles forming under her eyes as though she hadn't slept in many nights. She reached out and placed her big, gloved hand gently (or as gently as she could manage, anyway) on Shin's. "Thanks."

He gave her a weak grin and dismissed it with a wave of his one free hand. A devil flew past, crying for the arrival of night. Suddenly, Shin's eyes widened in realization. "Noi. We forgot the bags."

Noi groaned at him like a wild animal. "Fuck!"

Shin decided to cut their losses. He was exhausted, Noi even moreso, and four petty human corpses were not worth the trouble it took to relocate them amongst all the identical trashbags strewn across Hole's secluded, grimey alleyways. He sat up and pulled his glasses from his suit jacket pocket. "C'mon. Let's go."

Noi jumped to her feet with as much of her chipper energy she could muster on still-wobbly legs. There was a long trudge back to the En Family mansion ahead of them, and the whole way Noi held onto Shin's hand so tight his fingers threatened to fall off for a second time.

He didn't mind.


End file.
